MR.305

No Margot Robbie in a bathtub today. Just a hedgehog who's been watching private credit for months and needs you to read this carefully. 🦔The biggest banks on Wall Street are launching a new tool next week to bet against private credit funds, the same $3 trillion corner of finance that quietly holds money from pension funds and retirement accounts. JPMorgan, Bank of America, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, and Goldman Sachs are working with S&P Global to launch a credit default swap index called CDX Financials, allowing investors to profit if private credit fund managers including Apollo, Ares, and Blackstone run into trouble. Credit default swaps are insurance contracts that pay out when borrowers default. Banks want protection against their own exposure. Hedge funds want to profit from a downturn. This comes as Blue Owl reported 41% redemption requests last quarter and Carlyle's fund was hit with a 15.7% redemption request this week, more than three times its normal limit. My Take I want to explain why this matters for regular people because the language around it is designed to be confusing. Private credit is a market where investment firms lend directly to companies outside the traditional banking system. Millions of Americans have indirect exposure through pension funds and 401k plans without knowing it. When those loans go bad and investors try to get their money out simultaneously, funds gate withdrawals, meaning you simply cannot access your money when you need it. What the banks are doing now is building the infrastructure to profit when that happens. Credit default swap indexes were central to the 2008 financial crisis, and that doesn't mean we're heading there again. But when the largest banks on Wall Street simultaneously decide they need protection against private credit losses, and hedge funds are lining up to bet on a collapse, people with retirement savings in these funds deserve to understand what the people on the other side of that trade are seeing. Hedgie🤗

🚨🇮🇷🇺🇸 Ceasefire talks in Islamabad just collapsed and Trump is sitting cageside at UFC 327 watching people beat each other unconscious. If you're Iran's negotiating team, knowing the guy deciding your country's fate is at a fight night contemplating his next move has to be the most unsettling visual imaginable...

Brandon Nimmo with the Rangers: .370 BA 3 HR 1.073 OPS Has reached base safely in 13 of 14 games.

Shoutout to all the dads that paid five grand for this in 2004

🚨 BREAKING Norway calls for the total global isolation of Israel, demanding punishment for its role in spreading global unrest and chaos.

LOOK AT THE DIFFERENCE | 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱 𝘃𝘀 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 Trump has lost all his support.

Sheldon Adelson is looking to give big dollars to Rubio because he feels he can mold him into his perfect little puppet. I agree!